Breathing Underwater
by zethia
Summary: At the Shino Academy, flamboyant Shunsui takes up responsibility for making Juu-chan's love life just a little more exciting. Ukitake/Unohana with lots of hilarious Shunsui goodness.  R&R please!
1. Chapter 1

"Exactly," said Shunsui, slapping his hand onto the shoulder of Juushiro's white kosode. "I tell you, she has the _greatest_ eyes—they're even better than her lips. But when she looked at me and told me that she didn't feel ready for me, I felt like a great wave was tearing apart the bond that we used—" Mid-sentence, he slumped against the wall in abandon, sighing loudly and melodramatically to make sure he got his point across.

Juushiro Ukitake smiled slightly and pulled his best friend up. He was used to this sort of drama from him—after all, since they had entered Shino Academy four years ago, there hadn't been a single week when Shunsui _wasn't_ talking about some girl. "It's not the end of the world, Shunsui," he said as he patted his friend on the back. "Come on, there's got to be some girl who'll appreciate your new status as an eligible bachelor." For the third time in a fortnight. Wasn't it just last Thursday that he had said the exact same words?

He picked up the books Shunsui had thrown on the ground in a fit of frustration and followed after him into the courtyard. It was springtime in Soul Society, and the flowers outside were in full bloom. Students sat on the warm grass in clumps, chatting as they picnicked or lying down on the lawn. Shunsui crumpled to the ground and put his head in his hands. Putting on what he hoped was a sympathetic face, Juushiro sat down beside him.

Juushiro tried not to roll his eyes as Shunsui groaned mournfully. "I can't stand this feeling! It's like everyone else in this huge world has a special someone whom they can dedicate the very particles of their soul… but I suppose I must accept that love will never come to me easily." He pointed across the grass at a couple twisted up in an embrace, red and blue tangling together as they kissed. "Why can't my love life be as simple as that, Juu-chan? Why do I always have it harder than everyone else?"

"I don't have a girlfriend either, Shunsui," Juushiro said, sighing. "Neither do a lot of people. You don't always need a girl to make you happy."

"Yes, you do! It's—oh—what did you say?" He sat bolt upright, almost knocking his white-haired friend to the ground. Juushiro saw his face light up, and instantly regretted the words that had just come out of his mouth. "You're right. You don't have a girlfriend! You've never had a girlfriend before, have you, Juu-chan? _Have you_?" Shunsui leaned back and played with a cherry blossom between his thumbs, clearly in his element now. "You've probably never truly partaken of the divine fruits of passion. You're probably young and inexperienced in the vast garden of love, am I right? Well, that means that it's my responsibility, no, my _duty_—"

Juushiro could feel himself blushing. "I _have _had a girlfriend before! But I just—I just don't think that—"

Shunsui's hands clapped down hard on his back. "A _girlfriend_, Juu-chan? They don't count, not a single one of them. Trust me, I've had enough tragic encounters to tell. It's not love if your lips aren't burning with passion every time you think of her! It's not love unless you could compare her to the stars and really mean it in _here_." A palm came down hard on his heart, and he resisted the urge to cough. "All those girls your parents made you take tea with? Don't count. All those days second year you flirted with Aiko without even knowing it? Don't count. That time Kiku kissed you because you were depressed and she felt like it was 'her duty'? _Definitely_ doesn't count. Girls should want to kiss you out of something more than pity."

"But I actually _liked_ Kiku that time. She was so nice to me."

"Her looks weren't bad," said Shunsui thoughtfully, ruffling his hand over his friend's long white hair. "But that's beside the point, she's not in Seireitei anymore. What I was going to say was that with you being such an 'eligible bachelor' or whatever you call it, you need to prove your manliness to the world and hook up with someone!" He saw his friend's apprehensive expression and stopped. "What? Is there some problem?"

"I'm doing perfectly fine without a girlfriend. I really appreciate your effort, Shunsui, but that sort of thing's not for me, okay?" Juushiro pulled a piece of candy out from the pouch attached to his obi, hoping to distract the anxious matchmaker. "Why don't we just focus on your love life instead? Now, that girl over there with the flowers in her hair, she's not bad at all, and I think you might be her type."

"You forget, Juu-chan. 'That girl over there' is Sumiko and I already asked her out three weeks ago." He rounded on Juushiro, hands on shoulders. "I'm serious, Juu-chan, more serious than I have ever been about a girl. Shunsui Kyoraku is not a man to be trifled with when he wants something done, and I will make it my life's goal to see you in love!"

He hoped it had sounded as dramatic as it had in his head. Shunsui snickered, mussed up his dark hair, and looked around the quad, casting about for any glimpse of a pair of red hakama. There—a girl who was sitting in a shady corner reading a book, a dark, thick braid draped down her back. She looked studious enough to satisfy Juu-chan's more, well, _academic_ urges, and pretty enough to satisfy any physical urges that, with any luck, could possibly develop in him.

"That girl! She looks like your type, Juu-chan." Shunsui's grey eyes sparkled, and Juushiro's mouth fell open when he realized who it was. "What's her name again? Unohana. Retsu Unohana. She looks lonely, sitting by herself." He grinned and elbowed Juushiro gently in the side. "Top in our Kido class, if I remember correctly. Bet you she has magic fingers."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I was really surprised that a few of you actually added this story to your alerts! It gave me an extraordinarily warm and fuzzy feeling. Happy authors = more updates! I was also surprised at how this story took a darker turn, because I didn't really have a plot planned out, but I guess I'll just go with it :P If you enjoy it please review! Yyyeah. Love, Jessica.**

"I'm not doing it," said Juushiro, running a hand through his hair. It had turned white his second year at the Academy during a particularly bad coughing fit, and he had had to go back to Ugendo for an entire month. Though white hair in itself wasn't a bad thing, as he'd mused to himself occasionally, it was a constant visual reminder of his illness. Everyone who had seen him before and after the incident knew that there was something wrong with him, that he had a strange disease that made him cough up blood and his hair lose its natural black color.

"I'm not doing it," he repeated again, watching Shunsui out of the corner of his eye. "The coughing. I can't do something to someone like that."

Shunsui lounged on his bed on the other side of the long room, riffling through the pages of the book as if he couldn't care less about their contents. "It doesn't matter, Juu. You're always too serious. Have some fun, kiss a few girls, learn to laugh a little more."

"You think I don't laugh enough? I've pulled enough pranks with you. And I'm not worried about myself, it's about Unohana—Retsu, isn't it? She's nice, I suppose. I don't want to get myself tangled up with her, though. The illness—didn't I tell you already? It scares people, and I don't need her to think that some sort of diseased man is trying to force himself on her."

"Whoever said anything about you _forcing_ yourself on her?" Shunsui grinned naughtily, one end of his uneven smile peeking out higher than the other. "Get your mind out of the gutters, Juu-chan. Retsu's not a stupid girl. She'll probably know a good man when she sees one." They were getting to a dangerous topic, and despite his grin, Shunsui wasn't sure if his push had turned into a shove.

Juushiro took a deep breath and sat down, coughing lightly into a handkerchief. Shunsui was right about so many things—Retsu was pretty and nice and probably smarter than himself. It wouldn't hurt to be friends with her, but a girlfriend? A girlfriend was the sort of thing that Shunsui would have. He'd always viewed himself as the more calm and collected type, whereas his best friend was the fiery and passionate one of the two—not to mention the biggest flirt in Shino Academy.

"Do you really think that would happen?" he asked no one in particular, though he knew full well that Shunsui was the only one listening. Was he supposed to feel something for a girl he had never met? Blue eyes that tilted down at the corners, a thick braid down her back, a book and a shady seat during break at the academy: that was all he really knew about her. Juushiro snuffed out the lamp and the room was suffused in the gray-blue darkness of night, evening breezes brushing the roof. "I can't imagine it at all."

Shunsui was silent. He was eager to play the part of the matchmaker for his friend—though he made a resourceful prankster and a fun accomplice, there was something darker and more private about Juushiro, a part that he rarely talked about. "It's really the disease, isn't it?" he asked quietly, wondering if he'd gone too far this time.

Juushiro had been expecting a witty comeback, but he just sighed and cleared his throat. "I'm the oldest one in my family, and I feel like I have to protect everyone else. Up until I came here and met you, I always thought I would be the weakest." Images flashed through his mind in the darkness: As a young boy, herding his siblings back inside the estate and feeling the sharp cut of breath in his throat as he ran behind them. The crying of a sister during Seireitei's last huge thunderstorm as he wrapped himself in a blanket, coughing and coughing as if the pain would never end. White shapes and figures of light moving around through closed eyelids, and when he'd woken up, the blankets heaped at his feet. "I shouldn't have to be the one who everyone else has to take care of. When I figured out that I could fight, there seemed like there was a chance for me, other than an invalid." He paused, trying to untangle the mess of words that stuck in his throat like phlegm. "I don't want… to have to burden anyone else."

"Juu-chan." The voice was barely a whisper. "That doesn't mean you don't need friends. Just—just give it a try, all right? Sleep on it. Figure something out. If you really feel that bad about yourself, then you goddamn _deserve_ to be in love." Juushiro heard Shunsui roll over in his blankets, pulling the curtain shut against the window. "Good night, Juu."

—

Juushiro did not—_could_ not—sleep all night.

The moon made playful shadows on the wall by his pillow, and he felt unbearably warm in his blankets. Shunsui was probably right—he'd come all this way, four years at the academy, so why not have some fun at it? He flipped his head over, nudging the mass of white hair to the side, the one blatantly obvious sign of his disease. Juushiro couldn't visualize what it would be like, living in perfect health—would that mean he wouldn't have to carry a handkerchief wherever he went? Would he be a stronger fighter, a better student? Would he have turned out like Shunsui? As much as he loved his friend, he could never imagine what it felt like to be him.

He couldn't tell if it was the beginning of another coughing attack or simply discomfort over the thought, but Shunsui's playful matchmaking had hit something in him that he wasn't sure he could handle. Him, of all people, with a girlfriend? It wasn't an outlandish idea—most of the students at the academy played around at some point, stealing a kiss or flirting. That said, it wasn't as if Juushiro hadn't had his fair share of female attention—as Shunsui had so kindly reminded him, though, everything he'd done in the past few years apparently did not count as "enough."

So what was "enough?"

He didn't know how to act around girls. Naturally, Juushiro tried to be a nice person, and from what people occasionally said about him, he had been fairly successful. Shunsui, being the flirt that he was, could fit at least twenty cheap pick-up lines, half of them outright _sexual_, into a two-minute confession of love. Loath as Juushiro was to admit it, Shunsui made it look so easy.

Maybe, then, it wasn't that he couldn't flirt with girls in "the right way." Maybe he just hadn't had enough experience. But then how exactly did one go about getting girls to fall in love with oneself?

More importantly, Juushiro wondered, how did one go about falling in love with a girl?


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** I know I haven't updated this in a while, but I'm getting back into a fanfictiony groove. Spring break is next week for me, which means more updates! And you guys are so nice, I just want to put all my feels in a box and post them on the internet. Anyway, I'm kind of proud of this chapter, so if you like it reviews would be veeery nice ;)

"Juu." There it was, Shunsui's long ponytail tickling his ear again. Juushiro turned and wrapped his blanket around his shoulders, groaning in the pale morning light. He was so warm and sleepy, why couldn't Shunsui leave him alone for once? "Juu-chan. JUU-CHAN, WAKE UP!"

He raised a hand and grabbed at the end of a ponytail, jerking down hard. "Shut up, Kyoraku."

Unfortunately, the shaking continued. "Juu-chan! Something special is going to happen today, something that I've been planning for a long, _long_ time. Do you know what I'm talking about?" Juushiro felt something cold drop deep in the pit of his stomach, and he tasted bitter on the roof of his mouth. He knew exactly what Shunsui was talking about, and suddenly he didn't feel so warm or sleepy anymore. He forced his eyes open. Shunsui's grinning face was barely an inch above his.

… so he did the only reasonable thing he could think of: He screamed.

"Shunsui!" he panted once his heart rate had slowed down to something remotely resembling normal. "Get off! Have you no concept of personal space?"

"You're just being a prude again," said Shunsui playfully, tapping Juushiro's cheek. "Not enough physical contact, that's probably what's got you all wound up. And it's no fun cuddling with your old pal Shunsui, is it?" His liquid brown eyes grew bigger and rounder in his face. "No, no, old Shunsui won't do. Juu-chan needs someone—a _real _woman, the kind who can please him the way he wants." The last sentence was accompanied by a wink that would have made old Yamamoto blush.

Juushiro could feel his ears turning red, and he was glad his hair was long enough to hide them from view. For some cursed reason, though, it wasn't enough to hide them from Shunsui. "Aw," cooed his best friend as he lifted up the stark white strands of hair from Juushiro's neck. "You're blushing! How cute!"

"Shut up," he said, rolling his eyes. "What time is it? Has school started?"

An unsettlingly devious look crept slowly across Shunsui's face, and Juushiro wished he hadn't asked a question. Shunsui could interpret even the most innocent of questions as openings for his terrible punch lines, and the one that followed was even worse than normal. "It's time… for operation GET JUU-CHAN A GIRLFRIEND!" A huge poster was shoved in his face, with a sketch of something that remotely resembled a small boulder with wings.

"RETSU UNOHANA!" crowed Shunsui, waving the poster back and forth so that her name was forced into his vision. "That's you," he said, pointing to one of the blobs on the side of the page, "and that's _her_." He waggled his eyebrows up and down and pointed at the other blob. "JUU-CHAN'S GONNA GET A GIRLFRIEND!"

A sharp knock echoed at the door, and it slid open to reveal the white-streaked beard of Head Captain Yamamoto. The sight that greeted him—well, it was unusual even among the hormonal teenagers who attended Shino Academy. Kyoraku—that was the brown-haired one—was straddling the legs of his white-haired, sickly roommate. Ukitake, that was the name of the pale boy. What was Kyoraku holding? Did that poster say… "Retsu Unohana"?

"Classes start in twenty minutes, boys."

Yamamoto grimaced at the testosterone-saturated air and made a mental note to himself to keep track of these two. They were definitely troublemakers, which meant that with any luck, they'd also happen to be extraordinarily gifted.

"Oops," said Shunsui as they walked across the lawn in their blue uniforms. "Think Yamamoto heard us?"

"It would be a miracle if he didn't," snorted Juushiro as he followed behind his brown-haired friend. "You were louder than a cat in heat."

"Hmmm, you're probably right," he mused. Suddenly his face lit up, and Juushiro groaned. "Juu-chan! You just made a _sexual_ comment!" Juushiro felt his face being enveloped in Shunsui's chest. "I'm proud of how far you've come, Juu-chan!" A bell clanged in the distance. "We should get to class. If _Retsu-chan_ sees that you're late, imagine how she'll think…"

The next four hours, which Juushiro spent sitting uncomfortably close to Shunsui, went no better. Shunsui had carefully optimized their seats for maximum viewing, as he called it, which meant that Juushiro was as far away from the instructor as possible, with a wide three-quarters view of Unohana from any angle he could turn to.

"Kami, Kyoraku," he groaned, halfway through the last lesson. Classes usually weren't this bad, but Shunsui's running commentary was certainly nothing to look forward to.

"Look at her thighs!" came a piercing whisper from his right, and Juushiro winced as he followed the line of Shunsui's pointing finger. "They're so shapely. Thighs like that you don't get every day, Juu-chan. Sometimes they're too skinny and they look like bones, and sometimes they're not shaped the right way, and sometimes they're just out of the question altogether. Now that I look closer at her hakama, those are really _nice_ legs, Juu-chan!"

"Kyoraku, you horny idiot," whispered Juushiro as subtly as he could, moving Shunsui's hand back onto his own desk. "Everyone is staring at you already."

Shunsui was not to be disturbed. "I consider myself a fine connoisseur of thighs, I'll have you know. Moving on—that braid! It's so—long—and so thick—and so _dark_. Actually, I think I might have a little bit of a braid fetish myself—"

Juushiro was tempted to ask if he was drunk, but decided otherwise. "Shunsui, if you like her so much, you're welcome to have her. There's nothing stopping you."

His friend looked horrified. "Now, Juu, I know I may not be the most _honorable_ warrior when it comes to the battle, but she's yours, all yours, and I—" He was cut off again by the sharp clang of the bell for lunch break, and in his struggle to get to his feet, managed to knock over two students dashing for the door.

"—_all yours,_" continued Shunsui as he wrestled his book out from under the desk, "and I have no intention to change that myself. As a friend, I never play dirty, and—" He cast a glance around at the empty room. "Oh! That was fast. You know Juu, I've got something to do and I should be going. See you later, all right?" Before he could register the movement, Shunsui was out of the door, and it slammed in the dusty noon sunlight. Juushiro stuck another book in his bag, looked around, and nearly groaned aloud. He was alone in the room—except for one person, and that person was Retsu Unohana.

"You never play dirty, right," he muttered under his breath, making a mental note to punch Shunsui the next time they met. He could feel his ears heat up again in annoyance—or was it shame? Juushiro looked up and caught Retsu's eye and tried to smile. _Sorry about this, _he wanted to tell her, though it was certainly not a good time to say something like that. _Sorry that Shunsui dashed off and left me here alone and now you have to deal with me, oh kami I'm sorry._

Much to his surprise, she smiled back, her eyes crinkling into dark crescents. "Ukitake, isn't that your name?" He watched her braid swing against her back for a good five seconds before registering her question.

"Oh, uh, y-yeah. Just call me Juushiro, I guess? I mean, you can just—if you don't want to—" Juushiro? Where had _that_ come from? He felt his ears go redder. _Curse that Shunsui, curse him and his tricks._

"Well then, Juushiro," she said as she swung herself out the door and into the sunlight, "I'm Retsu. It was nice meeting you!"

_Her smile was there until the very end._ She was nice, he thought absentmindedly as he tucked loose white strands behind his ear, gazing up at the sun filtering through the dust of the classroom. He could really get used to this.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Oh man, I haven't updated this fic in aaaaages! So much thanks to LazyNezumi for giving me really nice praise and ideas and everything oh my god you are the best. This update is for you.

* * *

><p>"Do you think I could do it?" asked Juushiro, hugging his knees on another academy break. Autumn in Seireitei had its perks, and though he still cringed a little at the sight of his stark white hair, it was good to feel the breeze again.<p>

"Of course you can!" exclaimed Shunsui, smiling so hard that his eyes crinkled into curves, and in a slightly disturbing way, Juushiro was reminded of Retsu's eyes. But much less delicate, and much less masculine. He backed away.

Shunsui caught him by the shoulders nevertheless. "That's what I've been telling you the whole time, Juu! You go up to Retsu, you ask her, will you take tea with me? And then you kiss and have a happily ever after and produce thousands of honorable children with magic fingers."

Juushiro turned away, a groan trapped in his throat. "I shouldn't have asked you. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth, Shunsui. Excuse _you._"

—

The water faded in and out of his dreams, a deluge of black that alternately drowned him, suffocated him, strangled him. He drew his shining zanpakuto, screamed for help through a completely constricted throat, and wondered if anywhere, there was anyone who cared.

And then he opened his eyes, only to find a grinning Shunsui sitting on his knees. "You make funny sounds when you sleep," he said, leaning closer.

Juushiro jerked up instinctively, his elbows digging into the thin pillow at the head of his bed, and almost screamed for help—

—until his throat tightened and something heavy and dark rose at the back of his neck, and when he lifted his mouth to cough, there was blood on the white sleeve of his robes.

_Oh no._

He looked at it in disgust, disappointment, fear. This wasn't the first time his body had betrayed him—but it was not, was never a good time. When everything was going well, when he was finally caught up in his classes, on the brink of graduating, and meeting beautiful girls who smiled far too softly—he fell. And though he could always pick himself back up, it never meant good news. It wasn't an obstacle that he had to overcome to be a better person. It was an enemy that could never be defeated, that threw him back day after day, attack after attack, from which he could only hope to recover and survive again.

"I'm sorry," said Juushiro, his voice a harsh grating in the emptiness of the morning—night? He looked up at Shunsui, whose eyes were squinting in confusion. "What time is it?"

The sky outside was half dark, and Shunsui sighed as he drew the blanket off of Juushiro's chest. "Evening. Too late for you to be asleep," he said, casting a sideways glance at the blood-stained sleeve. "And you should be sorry. You never told me it was this bad."

Juushiro only shook his head, another cough rising in his throat. "No point," was all he could choke out before his mouth was pressed to his sleeve again, and he hoped the blood wouldn't be too much this time.

A cool hand was pressed to the back of his neck and he was lifted up off the bed, his chest seizing up in spasms as he coughed and pressed his eyes shut, still coughing. "You're so light," a distinctly feminine voice whispered, and he was being carried up and around, and the ache in his lungs was sizzling and fading, though the burning in his throat still flamed. Who was that voice? Whose hands were those? They couldn't be Shunsui's—he was never this gentle. Juushiro didn't think he had it in him.

He pressed his fingers to his throat again, and in the muted dusk, the blood was strikingly black against the white sleeve, the even whiter hair.

A hand reached over to brush the strands out of his eyes, and the voice spoke again. "Don't talk, Juushiro," she said, as her blue eyes met his, and the braid coiled over her shoulder came into view. "Just let me take care of you." Her face was so close to his, and her hands on his skin—he couldn't tell whether she was trying to take his pulse or keep him up.

The pain rose in his throat again, but before it could surface, something sharp and sweet filled his nostrils. He gasped. The last thing he felt before his world went black was the brush of her lips against his ear—something cool, something soft, something whispered that he couldn't quite understand.

—

Fever dreams were bad, and worse than they had been any time before. They had always been about the family he'd left behind and couldn't protect, the times when he'd been sick before. And especially painful the heartbreak in his mother's pretty round moon face when she saw what he'd become, frail on a sickbed in a room flooded with too much white—the color of a wedding which he would probably never have, the color of a death that was sure to come.

But now the dreams had shifted, and he wasn't sure why. In one version of events Juushiro knew he was dreaming: that everything was terrifying and dark but that certainly, eventually, there was a way of escape. But the other part of him succumbed entirely, and so when he saw the flash of a brilliant zanpakuto and the swinging of a long thick braid, and the narrowing of blue eyes that he had almost lost himself in hours before, he wanted to scream—but that was impossible, of course, because he was screaming, had been screaming this whole time for everything to stop.

So from the sidelines of his nightmare he watched Retsu battle demons, slicing neatly through them and whirling around, always calm, composed, efficient. And then the rain started—cracking lightning that pulsed through the air and lit up events in a terrifying strobe.

One hollow fell to the ground, she turned on another. Their wispy corpses littered the ground around her. And finally he watched as a Menos Grande emerged from its curtain of mist and slid gently over her, until she was lost in its blackness, gone in its shadow.

Juushiro screamed and coughed, and though in the back of his mind he knew it was impossible, tasted blood. And then he was washed away by the torrents until he could not even find himself.

—

"He's burning up," she said to the brown-haired man with big soulful eyes, the one who had been sitting by the patient's bedside for hours now. "I don't know what to do."

She tried to keep her voice soft, but it was harder now, harder now that they were too close to be certain at all."

To her complete surprise Shunsui did not look worried, only resigned. He stood up slowly and slid the door open. "Thank you, Retsu," he said, looking around, and she wondered a little perplexedly how he knew her name. "You're the best he could have. I think he needs some more time alone with you."

As the door slid shut again and the room filled with white, a throbbing, sinking sadness filtered through her. The weight of her braid against her back had never been heavier. She brushed a dab of blood off of his cheek and wondered why, on the first day they had asked her to help out in Division Four, she had been assigned to save the life of someone she knew.


End file.
